Chance
by aslycsi1315
Summary: While the team is stranded in an New York airport on Christmas Eve, JJ comes to a realization just in time for the holidays.


**A/N: This was written for Jekkah for the Christmas Gift Fic exchange. Hope everyone has a happy holidays!**

I'm dreaming.

I'm standing in the middle of a snow covered forest, where there's a light snowfall powdering the twigs on the ground and the fir branches. I'm wearing a blue trench coat with my favorite yellow hat that has just the lightest touch of snow on it. The forest is so quiet that I can only hear my calm breaths. I'm standing in Pecker Woods, an area that I grew up next to when I was little. It's my favorite place in the world.

"Mamma, he's gonna get me!"

It's my son, Henry. He's running towards me from such a distance that I can't tell if he's scared for his life or not. My hand falls from chest to my waist, where my gun is supposed to be, but isn't. I ready myself to take down whoever's out to hurt my son, but then I see that there's nothing wrong with Henry.

The three year old is giggling as he runs towards me, his long blonde hair sticking out of his striped red and blue hat. He jumps over a large fallen tree branch and looks back off into the distance. Suddenly, I see seven year old Jack Hotchner bounding down a hill towards Henry yelling, " There you are, Henry!"

"Not if I get to Daddy first!"

Henry takes off again, not even stopping to wave at me. He jumps twice over nothing before running hard after a figure a few meters away from us. My heart stops because I hadn't notice the figure who's facing away from us. It's a tall, dark haired man that Henry seems to know as he jumps into the man's arms.

"Daddy, Jack's it! You's safe base!" Henry tells the man. As I take a step forward to see who's holding my son, Jack races past me and yells, "Da-ad! Henry cheated!"

"Well, he's three, Jack. It's ok."

I freeze when I recognize the voice of the man. It isn't Will, Henry's father, who neither my son nor I have seen in twelve weeks.

It's the person I least expect.

It's Aaron Hotchner.

**December 24, 2012- Syracuse Hancock International Airport- Syracuse, New York**

I awoke with a start at the sound of giggling from Penelope and Spencer. My teammates were standing on a ladder near the gate door, Spencer hanging tinsel in a Spencer-Reid like fashion above the door. Penelope was giggling at Spencer's designs, especially the loopty loop around the top of the door. I admired them deeply for the bright attitude during the irritating predicament we were in.

We were stranded in an airport on Christmas Eve.

Storm Halo was terrorizing the northeast, dumping 2 feet of snow in less than 24 hours. Northern New York was hit the hardest, which was bad luck for us. Our case, a fiery serial "Choppy" killer as Penelope had called him, had us in the city until the very last minute before the storm hit. We had to stay until that bastard was caught, regardless of any super storm. Penelope, being the optimistic and the only one who can charm Aaron into doing anything, insisted that we tried to catch a last minute flight.

Hence, being stranded in the airport.

"Is that it on the tinsel?" Emily called over from our make shift beds on the airport seats. She spread her jacket over the two sheets on her bed and looked back over to where I was laying. With us being the only ones in the airport, the airport personnel had given us over a dozen blankets, pillows, cold pizza, and oddly, Santa cookies from the Cookies Ect. _What Child is this p_layed from the speakers from above us, creating a Christmasy mood for a pretty much empty airport.

I sat up and smiled as Derek walked behind Emily and said, " Yep," with a mouth full of Santa cookies. Emily smirked at Derek before noticing that I was awake. She put her hands on her hip and laughed, " How was naptime, JJ?"

"Shut up," I replied, throwing a pillow at her. Derek sat down on his make-shift bed and joked, "Ooh, catfight."

And Spence, being Spence looked up, confused. " There's cats here?"

"No, dear," Penelope told Spencer. She turned to me and said, "JJ, now that you're up, we need you to help us in our festivities!"

"Festivities?"

"You really don't think we're going to spend Christmas in a funk, do you? If we're stuck here, we're going to do things right. We have decorations and somewhat decent food that Derek keeps eating." Penelope walked up to me quickly and stated, " You need to go and wake our captain and go look for ornaments. Oh and while your'e at it, please go find Rossi. He was sent to go find candy canes and more cookies and he hasn't been seen since. Now off!"

_Alright, then. _I turned my attention over to Aaron, who was quietly sleeping on the bed across from mine. For a man laying down in a suit, he looked oddly comfortable. I pulled myself off of my bed and reached over to give Aaron a hard shake on the shoulder. He jolted awake, but slowly sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"Is the storm over?" He asked groggily. I shook my head, not needing to look over my shoulder to know that the swirling Christmas Eve blizzard was still going strong. Aaron still looked over his shoulder and saw that the airport windows were completely white.

"I see," Aaron muttered in disappointment. I knew that his heart was breaking for his son, who was no doubt waiting eagerly for his father to be home for Christmas. Not wanting to dwell on the fact that my own son was also waiting for me at home, I decided to change the subject.

"So apparently, we're having a Christmas party and Penelope want us to go find ornaments and Dave, who was supposed to on candy cane duty and hasn't returned yet," I stated.

"Dave's probably with a flight attendant or a nice bottle of scotch," Aaron said, smirking. He pulled of his tie and added, " He probably won't be back until we need to leave."

"True. Well, while we're off hunting for ornaments, we can keep an eye out for him." I pulled on my jacket as a breeze from a slightly cracked open window hit me. Aaron stood up and nodded over to the hallway that led to the souvenir booths. "Shall we?"

Fifteen minutes later with no sign of Dave, Aaron and I found ourselves in a small store that sold New York goodies along with little Christmas trinkets. I stood near the back of the store, quietly toying with a silver dove ornament. I was hardly paying attention to Aaron, who was looking through the _I love Syracuse_ shirts. I was too focused on the dream replaying over and over in my head. I knew exactly what the dream meant- I had fallen for Aaron.

My mind drifted off to the many private moments between Aaron and I- my admission about my sister, visiting Emily in Paris and long nights at the workplace. I didn't know if that meant that I wanted to marry and settle down with him at this moment, but I knew that I trusted him personally, emotionally, and professionally. If I lost him, I wouldn't know what to do what myself. It's the same feelings I had with Will, but a part of me knew that if Aaron and I were together, he would never leave me like Will did.

"JJ, are you alright?"

"JJ?"

I snapped out of my gaze and looked over to Aaron, who was now by my side. " Yeah, I'm good," I stammered, " Just tired."

"You sure? I know things have been hard since Will left-"

"Ran," I spat unintentionally, " the bastard ran and left me alone to raise Henry. And then the stupid…." I trailed off before I could finish my sentence. The dream was something that I didn't want to talk about at this moment in the middle of an airport. Unfortunately, Aaron had caught onto my behavior.

"What dream?" he asked. His eyes were so warm and welcoming towards me that I felt myself struggling to say _no. _

"I shouldn't say it-"

"You sure?"

I inhaled deeply. Although my gut told me not to say anything, my heart which wanted to say _I love you_ won. " It's about you. Sorry- it was where my son and Jack were playing in the forest where it was snowing and so perfect and then you came out of nowhere and Henry called you Daddy and-"

Aaron touched my arm and I immediately stopped talking. He didn't seem scared or uneasy about what I had just said. I dropped my shoulders and said slower, " This dream had you and our boys as one big family. And as weird as this may sound, I loved it, just like…I love you."

Aaron blinked at me before doing something unexpected. He gently grasped my hand before pulling me into a kiss. It was breathtaking- so passionate, so warm, and just…breathtaking. For that moment, I didn't care that less than a minute ago I was telling my superior that I had a dream about him or that we were stuck in airport on Christmas Eve. The only thing that mattered in that moment was that he was kissing me.

And all it took was one silly little dream.


End file.
